Update ON THE SERVER!

Red alert! RED ALERT! This is not a drill. I repeat this is not a drill. We have an update on our hands! All praise TSTO not being dead! 🙌🙌

At first glance, I can tell you this appears to be (another) 2-week mini-event (which means this is an in-game update, so nothing to update in the app store. It should download automatically for you). It’s slated to start TOMORROW, April 10th, at 10am ET (1400 UTC). Again, it’s supposed to start tomorrow. So it’ll download today but nothing will trigger until tomorrow morning.

At second glance I can tell you…holy mother-forking shirtballs this update is called…MARGE AT THE BAT!

For those who have read this site for awhile, watched Addicts Live, or just know me at all, you know Homer at the Bat is my FAVORITE episode. I’m excited to see what’s in store here….

Update: Ok guys a heads up…I’m not 100% sure of this or not..but the Yearbook box MAY be leaving the store. So be prepared if it does.

Also, at first glance, this looks like nothing. I’m hoping EA only released a small portion of the files today. Because right now this is nothing. No new characters, decorations, buildings, or costumes. Just a bunch of stuff coming back. So color me confused….

Update #2: What I see right now is an 8 part questline, ZERO new content. Loads of returning content. And the chance for players to get characters and skins for free if they missed them during Tap Ball or Springfield Jobs (Aristotle only). Other than that I’m not seeing much guys…so I’m very perplexed at the move here.

Whew, let me tell you, that’s a relief. Knowing EA’s bad habit of shutting servers down after a while, I was starting to get scared it might happen with this game I put a lot of love and passion in (translation: time and money, I did bought donuts before I became a farmer).

I think EA received word from the Simpsons people at Fox that with the sale of Fox to Disney, they didn’t know what would happen to the game. I believe this probably about a year ago, maybe slightly longer. So all EA could do is show Disney how successful and profitable the game still was after all these years and hope they would continue their contract with EA. So the marketing people at EA had to come up with a strategy to prove how successful the game was. They needed to find a way to make customers buy more premium items/ spend more donuts.
The 1st layer of this was a way for customers to make more donuts for themselves. They already had donut farming and the xp collider out to the people. So they just needed people to spread the word to everyone playing. With sites like TSTO out there, they knew that wouldn’t be a problem.
The 2nd layer was to start making older premium items more obtainable by putting them inside grab boxes for extremely insane values. They started using them in every event. They added hundreds more at Halloween and Christmas. The challenge for them was coming up with something during what would be considered a dead premium time. Thus the creation of the Golden Goose Realty and the Yearbook. The Golden Goose Realty was a quick 150 donuts generated for EA from almost every player. With all the new land created, The Golden Goose Realty also gave people an option to speed up the process. How?…… By spending more donuts. It also gave you the option to sell land tiles. For what?…. More donuts of course. Then the Yearbook made everything even more insane. For the chance of 30 donuts, you could win premium items worth as much as 5 times the value/price.
So why do all this and to what point? Does anyone remember Alissa posting the image of the billboard of how successful Simpsons Tapped Out has been with all the donuts sold. That was EA’s point to Disney that the game is still red hot successful. The marketing gurus could falsely prove that to Disney because of they padded the fake bottom line by showing how many donuts had been spend in 2018 and 2019. Disney would have no clue how the donuts were generated. They would just see the total amount of donuts used to purchase the premium items and how many premium items were sold.
So assume now that they were unsuccessful. What next? They created a 3rd layer, a Plan B. They came up with a way that we could continue to play the game in autodrive just in case they didn’t get a renewal from Disney. With the creation of land, the Golden Goose Realty, and the Yearbook, they had created a way the game could continue to last for many without new content. I’ll end it there since this is already so long. However we are at a point that it could still go either way. A new update but with old content, hmmmm. Anyways, Have Fun Out There, 4thefunofit2

So remember, just because another company buys a company doesn’t mean current licensing deals are void. We’ve seen this with Disney in the past. When they purchased Marvel Universal Orlando still has the exclusive rights to Marvel content in Florida based theme parks, just like their original agreement. (this will also apply to Simpsons content at both Universal Orlando and Hollywood)

So doesn’t matter what Disney thinks of it, the contract is still valid until the end date specified on the contract. (plus it’s a licensing deal, pretty standard stuff. FOX (and now Disney) has little to no input on what goes on in TSTO)

Even if you take licensing out of the equation, and maybe Patric would concur, the simple amount increase of donut sales of premium items increased immensely in 2018 and continued into 2019. With donut farming, with the Golden Goose Realty that probably at least 90% of players purchased, the incredible increase in mystery box options during every new event(mini event) from 2017 Halloween through the last event that players took advantage of, and the Ultimate mystery box, The Yearbook, freemium players increased their premium purchases by astronomical leaps and bounds. From 2014 to the middle of 2017, as a freemium player, I spent maybe 500 donuts. From Halloween 2017 to now, as a freemium player, I have easily spent over 6000 donuts. When analysts look at raw data, the marketing/sales department of the game will look like geniuses. In the end, if this means our game is going to have a much longer life, I’m all for it. Have fun out there, 4thefunofit2

Excellent! I’m just happy our little game isn’t dead!! To me any event is better then no event! I’m in Canada and my husband is a Jays fan so a baseball event, even a mini one is fantastic!! Let’s play ball ! ⚾️

Also, when my update downloaded today, it also fixed the task with Fallout Boy I couldn’t complete because he did not come with the Radstation Air Fortress I received through the yearbook. EA Help could not help me with this—they’d add the character to my game only for me to see him disappear after sending him on his task book task, twice. Finally I asked for my donuts back to get something else that worked and they did, but the incomplete task remained. Whatever just updated today, fixed it, because when I opened my game, the task popped up with its concluding dialogue and is now closed from the task book. I don’t have the character, but at least there’s not an incomplete task. I had other yearbook issues, too. EA Help was able to add the missing ghost pirate ship that was supposed to come with Blackbeard and complete his first task. However, they haven’t been able to fix the “Pile of Snow” so that it will have options to “build” it and change it to “The Best Snowman Ever,” even though I had to explain several times to several staff, showing them screencaps of it and other things that have options to change appearance like the pool and gingerbread manor. Today’s update didn’t fix it, either. I really wanted that giant snowman! If anyone else was able to get that fixed, please let me know! 🙂

How about that. I was just thinking that my Springfield needed a baseball field. Just this past weekend I put one in behind the highschool. I wonder if one of the prizes will be a field? Just glad we haven’t been totally forgotten. Looking forward to tomorrow.

That would be cool. I have a football field behind the high school using the bleachers from Tap Ball. Getting some more bleachers to make a soccer field would be awesome, but building a baseball stadium to place in my center city would be tops.

Returning content I missed and would love to have an opportunity to snag would especially be more types of “ground”: airport roads, ice, and various other roads/paths that haven’t been offered for the 1.5 years I’ve been playing but I’ve seen in neighbors’ designs. Would also love the football stadium parts: bleachers, lights, field, etc. None of this was in the yearbook. I love the yearbook, though! I hope it stays around or more is added to it.

Yeah, I hope more characters get a task to animate the stadium besides just Homer. I definitely need more bleachers. The stadium fencing is unique, can’t have too much of that.. More lights would be nice too. I was always disappointed we couldn’t use the Tap Ball stadium after the event for visual tasks, maybe that will be remedied. Time to start coaxing my benchsitters back back to the ole ballfield! 😁

I agree, I hope that some football stadiums parts, boxing ring, flags, obstacle items, the tennis courts, machines and the walls are re-released. I would also love another chance to get some of the Bart Royale decorations again especially the walls. Oh and Easter items.